He didn’t say anything for a moment. We both just sat there, listening as people passed by us. The ground was slippery, and everyone was struggling to stay upright, taking tentative steps and still busting here and there anyway.
“You say that,” Dave said finally, “but I’m not sure it’s actually true. I’ve only known you a month but I’m aware of plenty of bad stuff about you.”
“Oh, really,” I said. “Like what?”
“Well, you have no condiments or spices, for starters. Wled just plain weird. Also, you’re vicious with a basketball.”
“Those aren’t exactly warts.”
“Maybe not.” He grinned. “But seriously, it’s all relative, right?”
The bell rang then, its familiar tinny sound muffled by the snow on the roof and windows. We both got out, my door creaking loudly as I pushed it open. The ground was icy, immediately sliding a bit beneath me, and I grabbed on to the Volvo to support myself. “Whoa,” I said.
“No kidding,” Dave said, sliding up next to me and barely getting his balance at the last minute. “Watch your step.”
I started walking carefully, and he fell in beside me, pulling his bag over his shoulder. His head was ducked down, his hair falling across his forehead, and as I glanced at him, I thought of all the times I’d found myself with boys over the last two years, and how none of them came anywhere close to being like this. Because I wasn’t. I was Beth or Eliza or Lizbet, a mirage, like a piece of stage scenery that looked real from the front with nothing behind it. Here, though, despite my best efforts, I’d somehow ended up being myself again: Mclean Sweet, she of the messed-up parents and weird basketball connections, Super Shitty and a U-Haul’s worth of baggage. All those clean, fresh starts had made me forget what it was like, until now, to be messy and honest and out of control. To be real.
We were almost to the curb when I felt Dave begin to slip again beside me, his arms flailing. I tried to secure my own feet, with mixed results, as he tipped backward, then forward. “Uh-oh,” he said. “Going down!”
“Hold on,” I told him, sticking out my own hand to grab his. Instead of steadying him, however, this had the opposite effect, and then we were both stumbling across the ice, double the weight, double the impact if we fell.
It was the weirdest feeling. As my feet slid beneath me, my heart was lurching, pounding with that scary feeling of having no footing, no control. But then I looked over at Dave. He was laughing, his face flushed as he wavered this way, then that, pulling me along, equally clumsy behind him. Same situation, two totally different reactions.
So much had happened that morning. Yet it was this image, this moment, that I kept going back to hours later, after we’d made it safely to the walkway and gone our separate ways to classes. How it felt to have the world moving beneath me, a hand gripping mine, knowing if I fell, at least I wouldn’t do it alone.
The snow kept coming down, piling up into drifts, leading to school being cancelled a little bit before lunchtime. As I pushed out the front door with everyone else, all I could think was that I had a whole free afternoon, a ton of laundry that needed doing, and a paper to hand in the next day. But instead of taking the bus straight home like I planned, I got off two stops early, right across the street from Luna Blu.
The snow had killed the lunch rush, so the restaurant was mostly empty, which made it easier to hear my dad, Chuckles, and Opal, who were in the party-and-event room just off the bar area. I could see them all gathered at a table, coffee mugs and papers spread out all around them. My dad looked tired, Opal tense. Clearly, the magic wand hadn’t materialized.
I walked through the dining room, to the door that led to the stairs. As soon as I opened it, I heard voices.
“. . . totally doable,” Dave was saying as he came into view. Deb, still in her coat, scarf, and mittens, was standing beside him, both of them studying the boxes of model parts. “Complicated, yes. But doable.”
“All that counts is the doable part,” she said, glancing around the room. When she saw me, her face brightened. “Hey! I didn’t know you were coming!”
Neither did I, I thought. “I had a hankering to serve my community,” I told her, just as Dave turned around to look at me as well. “What are we doing?”
“Just getting together a game plan,” Deb said, pulling off her mittens. “Did you have any ideas about the best way to proceed? ”
I walked over, standing beside her, feeling Dave watching me. I thought of that morning again, the solid circle on his wrist, the same one I’d been holding on to for dear life as we slid across the ice. He’s not my type, some voice in my head said, but it had been so long, I didn’t even know what that meant anymore. Or if this girl, the one I was now, even had a type at all.
“Nope,” I said, glancing at him. “Let’s just start and see what happens.”
Fifteen minutes later, a meeting was called.
“Okay, look.” Deb’s face was dead serious. “I know I just joined this project, and I don’t want to offend anyone. But I’m going to be honest. I think you’ve been going about this all wrong.”
“I’m offended,” Dave told her flatly.